


a wolf in sheep's clothing [is more than a warning]

by pagan_mint



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: 18 as age of consent, Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Victor Sullivan is an Angry Dad, brief instance of fairly severe profanity, implied relations with a minor, pre-UC1, pre-canon but post-Nate and Sully meeting, same events different povs, trusting Nate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 15:52:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14719085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagan_mint/pseuds/pagan_mint
Summary: Victor Sullivan is the manner of man who does not suffer intolerable behavior - and the Navy taught him how to make a weapon out of anything.





	a wolf in sheep's clothing [is more than a warning]

**Author's Note:**

> the first few lines of and idea for this came to me while I was cleaning my room yesterday morning, and I thought "now that's a oneshot" and here we are
> 
> title is taken from "wolf in sheep's clothing {ft. william beckett)" by set it off

Not that it differed from usual, but Nate had no idea where everything went wrong. He and Sullivan – Sully, the man kept insisting, but Nate wasn’t sure they were there yet – were meeting with one of the older man’s friends and business partners, in part to catch up and in part to discuss collaboration over a potential job. They arrived at the bar, shook hands, exchanged introductions and the usual pleasantries; the man’s name was Garrison, and he was a little older than Sullivan, handsome and charming in all the ways you would expect a thief and a scam artist to be. He had aged a little better than the other man, his hair still dark and only graying at the temples, while a full salt-and-pepper beard enhanced rather than obscured the line of his jaw. 

Nate liked him almost immediately. He had a friendly vibe and a deep, raspy voice, endearing himself to Nate right away with how well he and Sullivan clearly got along. It felt like they had only been chatting for five minutes before they were already done with their first round of beers. Wanting to give the two older men some space to catch up, Nate volunteered himself to order refills. 

The bar was packed – Friday night had maybe not been the ideal time to schedule a meet-up. It didn’t help that the bar was near a local college, either; with a sigh, he resigned himself patiently to waiting behind a boisterous crowd of frat boys for his turn at the bartender. He wasn’t worried about getting carded; he had a good fake ID, and besides, tricking people into giving him what he wanted was kind of his job now. 

He was zoning out, half-listening to the busy blur of chatter and rocking back and forth on his feet, when someone grabbed his arm. Wired to expect the worst from physical contact, he spun around, hand half-raised to throw a punch before he saw who it was. 

“Sullivan! What the hell, I almost – what’s wrong?” 

The older man looked furious. His teeth were clenched, a muscle working double time in his jaw, and his fingers were pressing into Nate’s arm harder than necessary. 

“Forget the beers, Nate. We’re leaving. Let’s go.” 

“We’re – but what about Garrison? The deal? If we pull that off - ” 

“ _Nate_ ,” Sullivan said. The younger man immediately stopped arguing. He knew that tone of voice. 

“We gotta run?” he asked quietly. His fingers twitched instinctively towards his waist; he had a knife strapped under his shirt. 

“No. But we’re walking away.” 

Nate chanced a glance back at their table, but the crowd had closed around them and he couldn’t see it anymore. “Alright. But he’s paying for the beer, right?” 

Sullivan let out a short bark of a laugh. “Oh, you bet your ass he’s paying for the beer.” An unsaid _and more than that_ hung in the noisy air of the bar. “Let’s get out of here.” 

“Sure,” Nate agreed, shouldering his way towards the door. Of course he had questions, but over the last couple of years, he had learned that there were some things Sullivan didn’t want to talk about. Some things he _couldn’t_ talk about.  “Let’s get.” 

* * *

Nate slid out of the booth where he had been sitting next to Sully. “You boys stay here and catch up,” he said, flashing a cheeky grin. “I’ll get us refills. Garrison, maybe you can give Sullivan here some hair dyeing tips.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Garrison said roughly, throwing Nate a wink. “This touch of gray is a hundred percent _au naturale_.” He said it “aw nat-choo-ral-ay,” exaggerating his easy Southern accent. 

“Yeah, okay,” the younger man laughed, turning to walk away from the table. Sully drained the last few drops from his bottle and then set it down with a clink, smiling at nothing in particular. Across from him, Garrison was watching Nate disappear into the crowd, a smile lingering at the corners of his own lips. 

“Didn’t even ask what we were drinking,” the other man commented. “Got it memorized, does he?” 

“Nate’s a bright kid,” Sully said warmly, fingers tapping on the surface of his empty beer bottle. “Memory of an elephant, and brains for days. Hell, he even knows Latin.” 

“Latin at 17?” Garrison exclaimed. “Well, at least now I know he’s not yours.” 

“Thanks,” Sully said sarcastically. “I might not speak Latin, but he can’t fly a plane, so I’d call us even.” 

Garrison chuckled. “That’s fair. So, what street corner’d you pick him up on?” 

Sully’s fingers stilled on the brown glass. “Pardon me?” 

The bearded man gave him a knowing look. “C’mon, Sullivan. That kid’s a walking honeypot. Don’t get me wrong, though, that’s a hell of a lot more useful than what I had in mind - ” 

Sully leaned across the table. “I don’t think I like what you’re implying, Garrison.” 

“ _Implying?_ Oh, God, say I haven’t gotten subtle in my old age.” Garrison winked at him. “No need to get all jealous on me, Sul. I know if I had a bedwarmer that looked like that - ” 

Junior league baseball had featured briefly in Victor Sullivan’s youth. Nothing had come of it, but he’d had a talent for the sport, one he could have made something out of if he hadn’t decided that girls were a lot more interesting. 

Point being, when his fingers tightened on his beer bottle and he threw it across the table, it landed with significant force exactly where he had been aiming. The glass shattered spectacularly across the bridge of Garrison’s nose, sending the man reeling back and clutching at his face. 

“Shitfuck, Sullivan, have you gone nuts? Why - _”_  

Standing up, Sully walked over to Garrison’s side of the table and grabbed him by the beard, pulling sharply until the man’s ear was close to his mouth.

“You’re a lucky sonofabitch, Garrison. I didn’t bring my .44 today because I thought I was meeting with a friend. If I’d known I was meeting the scum of the earth, I would’ve made sure I had it with me, so I could take you out back and do the world a favor by turning you into a red mist. This is you getting off easy.”

He let him go, watching the man collapse into the booth. Bleeding from a hundred tiny cuts and holding a hand to one of his eyes, Garrison still managed to blurt,

“But what about the -”

“The deal’s off, Garrison,” Sully said sharply. He turned away from the table. “Don’t call.”

He pushed through the crowd, finding Nate easily; the kid was moving back and forth to the beat of the terrible bar music, waiting for his turn behind a crowd of rowdy college boys. Sully reached out and grabbed his arm without thinking, immediately feeling bad when Nate whipped around ready to fight. He still didn’t know a lot about the kid’s past, but certain things hadn’t escaped him – the jumpiness, the aversion to physical contact, the way he warmed so quickly to any display of kindness or affection.

“Sullivan! What the hell, I almost – what’s wrong?”

There was no way Sully was answering that. Instead, he tried to reign in his emotions, keeping his voice tight as he announced that they were leaving. Nate wasn’t immediately willing to obey; he asked questions, because of course he did. That was the kind of person he was. The more he asked, the angrier Sully got – not at him, but the emotion still balled tight in his chest, clawing its way up into his throat and threatening to spill out onto the one person in this scenario who didn’t deserve it.

“ _Nate_ ,” he said pointedly, and the kid clammed up. Looked serious. Looked _angry_ , actually, taking a step closer and moving a hand towards a weapon Sully hadn’t known he’d brought.

“We gotta run?”

For a moment, Sully hated himself. Nathan Drake deserved better than this. He deserved better than to be 17 years old, standing behind a group of frat bros in a bar instead of being one of them, ready to end a man’s life for the sake of the one who had ruined his. For a moment, he wanted to say a lot of things. He wanted to say he was sorry. He wanted to say -

“No,” he said instead, and he wasn’t sure if it was to Nate or to himself. “We’re walking away.”

There were a lot of things Nate could have done, at that point. Asked a hell of a lot of uncomfortable questions. Refused to leave. Laughed him off. But instead, he just made a quip about Garrison paying for the beer and began to nudge a path for himself and Sully through the crowd.

As they emerged into the cool air of the early evening, the older man lifted his head and breathed in deeply. Yeah, the deal had gone to shit. But somehow, he felt oddly as though everything was going to be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> haha sully joke’s on you, have fun in uncharted 1
> 
> thanks for reading! I'd love comments but please no uc4 spoilers as I still haven't played it, I know shame on me I'll see myself out


End file.
